Prisoner of Our Own Device
by Floralia
Summary: A hunt gone wrong leaves one brother missing and the other on a desperate trip to a psych ward, to enlist help from an unlikely source.


**Title**: Prisoners of Our Own Device.

**Summary**: A hunt gone wrong leaves one brother missing and the other on a desperate trip to a psych ward, to enlist help from an unlikely source.

**Warnings**: Nothing major. Some language

**a/n**: Thanks again to Sendintheclowns and Gigetgal9 for both looking this over. I have no idea how I used to get anything done back when I had to make decisions for myself.

**Prisoners of Our Own Device**

It's easier to get in and see the patient than I'd expected. It's not like we've never done this kind of thing before, but still – a stolen lab coat and fake ID do not a psychiatrist make. But nobody challenges me, and it doesn't take me long to find the patient I want, tucked away in an otherwise abandoned corner of the ward.

Security really is shocking. I suppose maybe they're more concerned with keeping patients in than strangers out, but still… I've said it before. Regular people can be _painfully_ stupid.

I take a minute, standing on the threshold of his room, trying to compose myself to go in. I can see Crawley through the small window in the door, huddled in the corner of the room, drawing into the shadows. His face is concealed, buried between his knees. He's hugging himself for protection, rocking slightly. I don't know how long he's been here; I just know that no-one's been able to make him talk. Or get him to say anything that makes sense at any rate.

I don't care how much sense this kid talks. If last night is anything to go by, sense is not going to play a huge part in whatever happened to this guy. But I need answers, and I need them soon. Every minute this kid holds out on me is another minute my brother is stuck in that hell hole. And one minute of that is a minute too many.

I can still hear him calling my name, the way it twisted into a scream. I can still hear the voices; feel their presence on the back of my neck. I've seen some fucked up shit in my time, but the Golding Mansion takes that to whole new levels. I can't think of the last time I walked away from a job before it was finished, but I want never to have to go back to that place. Whatever the consequences of that might be. Three hours in there and I barely made it out with my sanity intact.

And I left my brother in there.

After swearing it would be okay, that I'd protect him, I left him alone in there to die.

He's strong, but I don't know how long in there is too long. How long it is before you become the man in front of me, hiding from his own shadow and keeping up an endless stream of babble just to keep the voices at bay.

Crawley saw something; something he shouldn't have. If I have any hope of getting out of here with my family intact, I need to know what that something was.

I need all the information, all the head start I can get to make the night's rescue mission anything less than suicidal.

After one last check of the corridor to make sure we're not about to be disturbed, I take a deep breath and put my most sympathetic game face on.

I knock on the door to announce my presence, and stride purposely inside. I don't want to startle this guy, who is obviously jumpy – he practically claws his way up the wall at my approach – but if he suspects for a moment I don't belong here he'll clam up. And then it's game over for all of us.

"Good morning. I'm Dr Grace," I introduce myself in as soothing a voice as I can muster. "I'll be taking over from Dr Robson. I understand you were reluctant to talk to him."

Crawley's watching me carefully through the gaps in his long fingers. He seems surprised to see me. I wonder how long he's been left alone with only the horrors in his mind for company. He moves his mouth a few times as though trying to speak, before deciding against it and turning his face away, hiding in the wall. I can't help but feel he's been weighing up his options, and come to the conclusion that I'm not real.

I wish I could tell him the other stuff he's hiding from wasn't real either, but I know better than that.

I think Crawley knows better than that too.

I step further into the room and take a seat on a chair against the far wall, not too close as to crowd him but I want to get off my feet. Take away the idea that I'm looming over him. From the faint morning light streaming in through his window I get my first look at James Crawley, and it makes my heart clench. Wide eyes stare up at me from a too young face before he shakes his head in denial, fingers clawing hold of matted long hair as he rocks. The resemblance to my brother is heartbreaking and I wonder again if I can do this. He's always been so much better at this kind of thing than me, turning those wide eyes and innocent face to his advantage.

But I know I don't have a choice. If I want to make sure my brother's resemblance to Crawley stops at the purely physical, I have until nightfall to put his mind back together. Nightfall, when the house comes to life, and the doors that closed up behind me might be opened once more.

His voice is low and hoarse from screaming, and it takes me a while to work out the words on his lips. The constant mantra of "Not real, not real, ignore it, not real," that keeps time with his clawing and his rocking.

"What's not real?" I ask him gently, leaning forward so my eyes are more at his level, but he refuses to meet them, just whimpers softly before resuming his chant.

"I'm very real. What else do you see?"

If there was something else in the room with us, I like to think I'd know, but I get the impression this guy sees a lot of things, all the time, that normal people don't. I can only hope to god I will never see some of the stuff his mind has seen. Some of the stuff locked deep away in the bowels of the Golding Mansion.

"You can trust me. Please. I need you to tell me what you see. What happened to you?"

He remains silent, watching me, brow furrowed. I can read people pretty well and I know confusion when I see it. I know he's unsure what he should tell me, or if he should tell me anything at all. But then he catches my eye and I'm flashed such a look of hope that it's clear he wants to tell his story. That he wants to be rid of it. He just wants somebody who will maybe understand it.

But then he looks away again and is studiously avoiding me, the single tear tracing its way down a bruised and grimy cheek the only indication that he knows he isn't alone.

"It'll be easier if you tell me," I attempt. "Maybe if you tell me, it will make some of the monsters go away."

Crawley's breath catches on a wet laugh and he's shaking his head again, and I wonder what he suddenly finds so amusing about my offer. How many times he's been promised this before. But he keeps seeking my gaze and I can't escape the tingling certainty that he _wants_ to open up to me. He just wants to be given a reason why.

But I'm terrified of how much his testimony can be relied on. He's obviously been traumatised by whatever happened to him inside that house. Hell, I'm a hunter and even I am pretty damn freaked. But that's nothing compared to how freaked out I am to know my brother is still in there. Enduring that madness. And it's possible this kid is the key to getting him out of there. I have to fight down the urge to just grab him and shake the truth out of him; if I could reach into his head and just yank the knowledge out of him I would do it without question. It isn't like I could break him any more than he's already broken, and there's so little time.

Crawley's whole demeanour shifts as though he can read my thoughts, and he looks suddenly frightened. Unsure. And I know he's more perceptive than his madness lets on. I'll have to tread softly if I have any hope of getting him to co-operate. If I want to get him to go back, revisit what he's built these walls to escape.

Crawley takes a deep breath, sets his jaw in determination, and turns frightened eyes to face me.

I smile encouragingly, hoping it comes across as reassuring rather than the anxious grimace it really is. I lament again that my brother isn't here in my place. He can tread so much more carefully with the 'softly softly' approach, and has the kind of face people automatically want to trust. I'm not lacking in skills of my own, but I tend to take a much more physical approach trying to get people to talk. Especially when they are the only thing keeping me from getting my emo sidekick back.

"You said when you were brought in that you went to the Golding Mansion," I begin hesitantly, noting the way he shivers at the mention of that place. "You were shouting that you'd been there, do you remember?"

Crawley swallows and nods timidly.

"And since then you've said nothing at all. Why is that? Why is it that you suddenly don't want to talk anymore? Is it the Golding Mansion? Is it something you saw there?"

Crawley's agitation is increasing, the shivers becoming full on shaking. "No, no, no, no, not listening, not listening, it's not really here, don't let it see, no, no, no…"

"What's not here? Crawley? James?" Crawley seems to start and still at the sound of his name. "James," I repeat soothingly, "There's just you and me in here. Nothing can hurt you. Nothing can get in. So it's safe. It's safe for you to tell me about the house." I hate myself for doing this, for pushing when I should be pulling back, but the morning's drawing on. It took me too long to get in here, and there's so very little time.

"Why did you go there? I think I can guess. You heard the stories didn't you? You heard people talking about the Golding Mansion, and you thought you'd go and see it for yourself."

I know this it true, because it's always true. It's the way things have always started. People hear legends of the big scary haunted house on the hill, and instead of doing the sensible thing and keeping well clear they just have to play ghost hunter and go in and investigate. And make our jobs a hell of a lot harder in the process. And those that don't find themselves eviscerated end up like Crawley, unable to comprehend what they've seen. People really should leave this kind of thing to the professionals.

But the Golding Mansion... I suppress a shudder. Even the professionals shouldn't have to tread in there. Maybe if he'd been able to keep his curiosity in check, I wouldn't be here. I'd be in my car on the way to Austin.

If it weren't for pointless civilian casualties, it's possible I would never have heard of the Golding Mansion at all.

I can feel my sympathy for Crawley's plight slipping. The grabbing and shaking approach is looking more and more appealing.

"I didn't… didn't know." Crawley whispers. "Th… that's not why we went."

And suddenly he looks so pathetic, so afraid, that I can't find it within me to stay mad at him.

"I want you to tell me why you went." I take a deep breath and try to get myself back on track.

He shifts doubtfully.

"It doesn't matter how crazy you think it might sound, I think you need to tell me what happened. You can trust me James. I know that sometimes things can seem scary, and not make a lot of sense, but that doesn't mean they aren't true. But they can't hurt you here."

I cringe as I'm veering into treating the adult Crawley like a child, but it seems to calm him, and my confidence starts to grow. Maybe I _can_ do this. My brother always says I have a knack getting children to open up to me – that I can deal with them better than him.

I tell him it's because I get a lot of practice, since he acts like a child so much of the time.

God, I wish I could tell him that now.

"I've heard the stories about that place too," I continue, "Whatever you're going to say, it isn't going to shock me. You're not the only person I've met who's been there. And I can tell you that talking about it _does_ help. It will. I think if you get it all out, maybe you'll be able to move past it."

Crawley doesn't say anything, but he's watching me intently, hanging on to my every word. It goes against all my instincts of keeping quiet about what I do, but I'm desperate. I need this kid to trust me. I need him to know that talking to me is safe.

My brother needs him to know that too.

"They say the house is haunted."

Crawley shifts, but I know he's too tense to be freaked out. He's too eager to hear what I'm going to say next – to receive absolution – for his mind to dismiss my words.

"They say the spirits of those that died there are still trapped within its walls. It's supposed to be abandoned, but I know people who have seen lights on at night. Heard music on the wind. Did you hear music James?"

His mouth says 'no' but his eyes betray him. He heard the music. Like me he hears it still. I push on to the line that will clinch the deal.

"You're not the only one. I've seen things I can't explain too. Maybe… maybe sharing them can help you find a way of explaining them. I believe you. You can tell me the truth. You heard the stories didn't you. That's why you went. That's how it started."

"No." Crawley's voice is barely above a whisper, is hesitant but somehow strong. "It didn't start with the house. It started with Juliet Core."

He says her name with longing, almost wistful, and he closes his eyes in shock as though he's said more than he should. It's a good thing his eyes _are_ closed and the rocking had recommenced, because it means Crawley can't see my own shock. Of all the things I had been waiting for him to say, that name is perhaps the only thing that could surprise me. Hallucinations and ghosts and blood oozing from the walls I had pretty much been expecting. But Juliet…

It had taken us days of research to get to her.

If Crawley knew her name, he had probably had some idea what he was walking into when he'd gone there.

If that's the case, he was crazy before that evil touched him.

"How did you hear about Juliet?"

Crawley's smirk is gone in an instant, but it causes me to realise what I've asked. Not 'who is Juliet?' or 'what does she have to do with the house?'. I already know these things. Eight hours in the local records office taught me that much. I'm showing my hand to this kid and he knows it, but I can't help but think if I'd asked him any other question, he would have clamed up again.

Maybe I've asked him the one question he will answer.

"I saw her," he whispered, "At the roadside." And my heart clenches. I already know how this story is going to go. I've lived it. I'm still trying to escape it. But I don't have that luxury yet.

I still have to go back.

"We… we were on our way to Bastrop and it was nigh time, and I... I just saw her at the side of the road. She looked…. Lost."

"You stopped to help her?"

"We were in the middle of nowhere. There was no car on the road. I thought… I don't know what I though." Crawley's talking to his knees again, voice so hoarse from screaming that I can barely make out his words. But he's talking. Not about the Mansion, not about what I want to hear, but I know that we're getting there.

"What happened when you stopped the car?"

"I couldn't find her. She just… It was late and I though maybe I was just imagining it, had been driving too long. That's what… That's what he thought when he woke and we were parked at the side of the road."

"He? The friend that went with you to the house?" Crawley whimpers and nods. "Where is he now?"

The look of absolute anguish on Crawley's face answers that question clearly enough, and it's not an answer I want to hear. I wonder if I saw him last night, this poor sap that had been talked into venturing into the hell. That had never made it out. Maybe he was the young man with his throat slit, whose cold clawing fingers had latched onto my ankle. Maybe his was the voice I'd heard screaming through the walls.

"We looked and she wasn't there" Crawley's voice breaks through my memories, forcing me to focus. "But when we left, she… I could see her in the rear-view mirror, just standing in the middle of the road. Watching us go. And she smiled at me."

And he was hooked. I remember that smile. I remember it as the beginning of the end. And I'd been foolish enough to follow it, and now I couldn't find my way back. But I wasn't just some scared kid. I'd known what she was.

I'd known the instant I'd seen that 1920s cocktail dress and the feather in her hair that she hadn't gotten lost on her way home from a fancy dress party.

I'd known from the outset that she was dead.

I'd been equipped to answer her plea for help, or so I'd thought. That's what I'd convinced my brother of at any rate.

"We stopped in town for the night. For a break. It was supposed to make the seeing things go away," Crawley breaks as he pleads for forgiveness. "But she didn't go away. She wouldn't leave me alone. So I… looked into the road. Found out about Juliet… and the house."

He'd done it backwards. The other way to us. We'd been looking into the house when we'd stumbled across Juliet on the roadside, and the connection had been obvious. Making it the other way around when the Golding Mansion wasn't even a blip on the radar…

"I'm surprised you even bothered to look," I admit, reluctant admiration in my voice. It had been an idiotic thing to do, but that doesn't mean I can't respect the kid's research abilities. Even my live-in geek had taken his sweet time connecting those dots.

But I can't blame him for that now. It was my determination that had led us there. He'd merely been along for the ride. To humour me. And he'd paid. He was paying still.

"She was persistent," Crawley admits with a rueful smile, and a flash of heart-stoppingly familiar dimples. "She was an actress. She's been big briefly on stage in the 20s." I nod. Was it only yesterday I'd heard this story for the first time? It feels like I've been carrying it around for a decade or so. It feels like I've been trying to find a way to save him for years.

"As her popularity grew she gathered some… less than pleasant friends." Crawley knows he has my attention and his confidence is growing. He's a shadow of the broken, whimpering thing I had encountered this morning. He's held his silence for so long, but now he'd finally confronted by someone who will listen to what he has to say. Will not sedate or restrain him for telling his tale. He's clearly damaged, but I can't help but wonder how much of his madness is contrived – a protection mechanism or a label he's been given by normal, safe human perception. One it's easier to believe than try to escape.

"And one of those friends was Golding," He finishes quietly.

I wait in silence. I don't want to prod him. It's as though he's waiting for me to continue for him.

Crawley stifles a yawn. He's watching me carefully and I have to squint through the mid-day sunlight streaming in through the blinds. I've been here too long. I've lost track of time. Crawley's real doctors will be here soon. Orderlies will be making the rounds with medication and lunch. There's still so much more I need to learn, but I can't be found here. I will be no help to anyone if I get myself caught. It makes me sick to even think about it, but I have little choice.

"I think we'll leave it there for this morning," I tell him, noting the surprise and alarm that crosses his features as I do. "We'll pick up after lunch. But I think we've made some excellent progress," I try and reassure him. Crawley smiles and nods hopefully, but still cringes into the wall as I stand, and I curse myself for not having given more warning before doing so.

I take a step towards him, I'm not sure why. Maybe I intended to shake his hand or pat him reassuringly on the shoulder, but the way his eyes go wide and the keening starts up again, I know I've made a mistake.

I'd been lulled into a false sense of security. The thrill of the hunt. The next couple of hours will be agony as I wait for another opportunity to see him, and I can only hope my clumsy exit hasn't undone all my hard work.

-0-

It's a couple of hours before I can get back in to see the patient, and I know instantly that I've left it too long.

Crawley's still huddled in the same corner of his room when I enter, his face hidden once more, hugging himself for warmth. He doesn't move as I approach, and it takes me a minute of hovering to realise the kid is asleep. I pray to anything that will listen that he isn't medicated – I need him as lucid as his traumatised mind can be – but no. That doesn't make sense. If he's been drugged surely the nurses and orderlies would have put him in the room's small metal framed bed first. He's obviously taken to his corner again after the hospital staff left him alone, and has fallen into a natural sleep.

I can't blame him. He looks exhausted, skin grey beneath the streaks of dirt and tears, the skin around his eyes dark and creased with worry. He can obviously find no more peace in sleep, in his dreams, than the world allows him out here.

I feel bad waking him. If anyone deserves oblivion it's this guy, but I've wasted too much time already, and if the lines of disquiet escalate into a full blown nightmare complete with screaming, my low profile will be blown.

And I'm not really and closer to answer than I was at daybreak, when that blasted Mansion shut its doors to me, trapping my brother inside.

"Crawley," I call out, leaning over his shivering form. "Crawley. James." In my impatience I reach out and touch him, and the reaction is instantaneous. I hadn't expected someone who looked so weak to be able to move that fast. He can't seem to decide whether he wants to bat me away or claw his way through the wall to escape me. I can actually see the scratches his nails make in the paint in his desperation. It takes me almost half an hour to calm him down enough to allow him to see me through the cloud of fear and panic he's built around himself.

Even when he seems coherent once more, Crawley can't stop shivering. He's clenching his fingers as though to restore feeling and protect them from the cold, which is worrying because there isn't even a draft in the institutionalised, uniformly heated room.

I start to worry that maybe his memories are sending him into shock. I've no idea how long he's been here, avoiding the issues I've been forcing him to confront. It's possible I've broken him – trained medical professionals have probably not tried to push him for a reason – but I can't think about that now. What quality of life did he really have before I got here? And if it stops anyone else from setting foot in that place, it will be worth it.

But I know my brother and his bleeding heart will not agree. He'll say I shouldn't have pushed this guy just to save him, but I can't care.

If it gets him back, I can't bring myself to care.

"You were telling me about Juliet," I prompt, "Do you remember?" He nods mutely, eyes still too wide. "About her friendship with Arthur Golding."

He's still silent, watching me curiously. But it's taken me so long to get him to focus on what I'm saying that I can't give in now.

"What did you do when you found Juliet?"

"We went to the cemetery. We went to… visit her."

I blink in surprise.

"What made you think you should visit her?" This guy was a traumatised victim waiting to happen. Who the hell gets haunted by a persistent spirit and decides it would be a good idea to visit her grave to say hi? I mean, admittedly that was exactly what I was planning on doing as soon as I'd got my brother back. But that visit would be more of the salting and burning persuasion than to take the dead woman some flowers.

Crawley shrugs, looking worried, and I remember too late my vow not to question him. Interrupt his flow. He's reluctant enough to talk to me without me questioning his every move. Pointing out his stupidity.

"I just… She'd seemed… lonely."

"You went to pay your respects." He's getting agitated again, ringing his hands and hiding his face from me by lowering it until it's concealed behind his hair. "What next."

"We'd gone at night."

I close my eyes. He really doesn't need to say any more. I want to scream and holler at this kid's stupidity, but he's looking remorseful enough as it is. Not that he's sorry for having such a death wish, for causing work for hunters like me who have to risk their life to save his ass. No. He's just regretting what he'd seen.

"The cemetery was… It's next door. It's connected to…"

"The Golding Mansion." I supply for him.

"Is that were.., will I…?

"Will you what?" I try not to sigh in frustration, but this kid is trying my patience and my anger is rising. He's eyeing me warily.

"Is that were I… when I..? If I die here, will I…?"

"Will you be buried in the cemetery next to the Golding Mansion?" I finish his question for him. The kid's young, barely in his 30s; it's an odd thing to be thinking about, but he must know his mind is broken , too broken to function in the outside world. Or too broken for him to want to leave the relative safety of his cell.

But to end up there in death… That would be no escape at all.

"No," I reassure him. "There's a local cemetery, at the other side of town. Holly's Memorial. That's where people who die in the area are buried today. The cemetery you went to fell out of use in 1986." I shudder despite the warmth of the room. Perhaps the events of 1986 should not be alluded to. Hopefully he didn't stumble across that tit bit of the area's history.

"Something you saw in the cemetery convinced you to visit the house?"

He nods but doesn't elaborate. I don't really need him to. They were technically on Golding's grounds so I imagine it could have been anything from flickering lights, music, screams, or disembowelled ex-victims grabbing hold and dragging them inside. Either way, I know he went in. But I need to know where he went. What he saw. I need to know if he knows anything that can help me find my brother.

"Golding had held a séance at the house," Crawley pipes up in a small voice, and I want to hit him for yet another subject change. "A group of them had a séance… I don't know where," He's watching me curiously. "Juliet was there. Some of the guests died…"

"And you think they woke something up that night?" I ask gently.

"No. No. There was no… No, no, it's not real." The agitation is as sudden as it is dramatic. He'd been lucid and I'd been eager and I'd pushed too far. "That shouldn't… no. It isn't possible, it shouldn't be possible." He's right of course. In a cosy ideal world it shouldn't be possible. Only unfortunately that's not the world we live in. "You shouldn't… why..? you shouldn't believe me."

He's right there too... I shouldn't believe him. Or Dr Grace shouldn't.

"I've told you," I say patiently, trying to calm him down before someone hears us, "I've seen things too."

"What kind of things?" he asks, almost eagerly.

"We're not here to talk about me." I say firmly. Maybe it would help him to open up, but the memories of that place are too fresh to share for nothing.

"I need you to continue, if you can James. I need you to tell me why you went in the house. What you found there. Can you do that?"

"We went the next night," Crawley continues reluctantly. He wants something more from me, I can tell. He wants me to give him something in exchange for his tale. Something more than absolution. But I don't know what it is, and I'm not qualified to be the one to give it.

"We went in the main entrance. Down the drive. Through the… the mini orchard." From the way he says it, I know he had a similar experience with those trees as I did. "We went in the front of the house. It was quiet. We… we went down the main passageway. Into the… the…"

"Into the Ballroom." I prompt.

"Yes," he whispers, and there's a light in his eyes I haven't seen the whole time I've been here.

Hope.

"You've been in that house. Haven't you." It's a statement, and I can't deny it's true. I rewind the conversation in my head and curse openly when I realise what I've said. I'd been so used to having to nudge this guy, finish his sentences to have any hope of getting him to move on to the next one, that I've shown my hand. I've shown him that I know the layout of that place, as only someone who's been there can.

"Yes." I admit, and I can feel his tension from my seat across the room. "But we're not here to talk about me. Did it start when you entered the Ballroom?"

"Did it for you?" His voice is harsh, almost cold.

He's trying my patience.

"I said we're not…"

"You said I could trust you. But you never told… No… This is crazy. You're crazy. I'm not… I won't…. I won't."

He's going to give himself brain damage if he hits his head against the wall any louder, and for someone who's all limbs he doesn't half know how to tuck himself small. I know I have to calm him if I'm going to salvage anything, but as I lower myself from my seat to crouch in front of him he gets even more agitated, and along with the rocking and the head banging he's scrabbling away from me and trying to ward off my approach.

"Don't touch me!" he spits in panic. "Lying, not real, not true, trying. Why should I talk… why...? He won't talk… he knows what's there... You saw, and no… no… no."

"I saw," I whisper, and while the shaking and the muttering haven't stopped completely, Crawley raised his head slightly and I get a glimpse of those deep watery eyes. The torture and the hope they hold.

"I went to the house." I say more firmly. "And I saw it too."

He's fallen quiet now but the shaking continues, his teeth are chattering too. He's just watching me, waiting, and I know I have to continue before he will.

"I went into the house, with my brother." I take a deep breath and close my eyes, opening them sharply when the darkness and the memories transport me back to that place. "We went in the front door like you. Everything was quiet until we reached the room at the end of the hall. Until we entered the Ballroom. And then…"

I've rugby tacked Wendigos before to keep my brother safe. Why is telling this story so much harder?

"The music." He guesses. "It started with the music."

"Yes. There was an old gramophone in the corner of the room. It started playing by itself. Jazz music, god I hate Jazz music. Old and crackled with dust. The whole house was alive with it.

"We entered the Ballroom and the doors slammed shut, and the music started."

I can feel a shiver rising up my spine. The same one I'd felt then. The presence in the house had been unmistakably evil. And strong. And it was everywhere. It was more than a spirit. More than a poltergeist. More than a whole herd of poltergeists. The whole house was evil.

"The door at the far corner of the room creaked open, and the wall sconces outside came to life, lighting up the way. The route it wanted us to take was clear. So we followed it.

"That's when the screaming started."

Another long corridor lined with paintings. Flickering lights. Scratching walls. Cobwebs. It was classic haunted house stuff, but it was something more too. Shadows of figures that disappeared before you could bring them fully into view. Wailing screams. Doors opening and closing of their own accord. And that damn jazz music, slow and slightly off key, covering it all.

"We went upstairs. We were in some kind of reception room when the first of the… the first manifestations appeared. We saw one, and then they were everywhere. One of them grabbed my brother. Tripped him and dragged him across the room towards the hallway leading off to the stairs. But I was thrown in the opposite direction and when I'd stumbled to my feet the door was closed. I couldn't see him. But I could hear him…" God I could hear him. I could hear him scream. The discharge of a shotgun.

"Then the house started laughing." I admit quietly. Every portrait. Every face in every picture had been laughing, and I'd thought I'd go mad with the sound.

"I managed to struggle past them…. the faces and the images. To the door where he'd…"

"How?" He's leaning towards me now. Curious. He's clinging to my every word like it's the best damn ghost story he's ever heard and I want to take that ineffectual shotgun and smear his brains across the wall for showing interest now. For being curious about the sound of hearing my brother tortured through the walls. Screaming my name.

And I'd told him it would be alright. That we just had to put the house to rest.

"I had enough salt to keep them at bay. To hold them off until I could reach the door."

"Salt?" He questions.

"Old wives tale," I shrug. "But then I opened the door, and I was downstairs again. Back in the Ballroom. The gramophone was still playing and there were shadows dancing, and…" I can't continue. I can't begin to describe the things I saw, felt, heard in that room. The smells. The madness had been overwhelming. I'd fought, bitten and clawed my way out of that hell, and I wasn't ready to go back to it.

"I searched for hours. I tore the place apart but they kept luring me back. Every time I broke free… every time I made it back to the room my brother disappeared in, something would happen and I would end up back in that damn Ballroom. In the end I just… I couldn't take it any more. I had to get free. I managed to break free of them one last time." I'd had to crawl my way through a dark tunnel with something wriggling in the walls to do it, losing my lunch and any fight I'd had left. Then I'd torn out the front door and not stopped running, even as the roots of the apple trees had tried to trip me and drag me down into the earth.

"There was nothing I could do. I barely made it out. I was out of salt, I'd lost my weapon. The ritual was with my brother and I couldn't find him. He was screaming my name over and over and I couldn't find him. I barely got out. There was nothing I could do."

He's sobbing with me now, face screwed up in misery, and I know he understands my tale more than any other man alive. He lost a friend there too. He led a man in there to die, and walked away from it. And like me he will have an eternity to ask himself why.

"You were a hunter?" he asks me in a small voice, and the sadness in his tone is overwhelming.

"Before I was a psychiatrist you mean?" My cover is well and truly blown, but that doesn't mean I have to acknowledge it.

"How did you get started?"

"You could say it's the family business," I tell him with a shrug.

Crawley gives a wry laugh. "Isn't it always?" He tells me, before turning his head to the wall once more and covering his face with his hands.

And I know that he was a hunter once, too. Until he went into that house and it broke him. He was no naïve innocent, and yet he never recovered from what he saw. And he never got his partner back.

But Crawley isn't me. I refuse to let this be me. I'm going back in that house come nightfall. With or without a plan, and I will hack and burn my way to my brother.

I will not leave him screaming in fear and pain for another minute more than I have to.

"We went out of the Ballroom and up the stairs. Through a bedroom with red trim and into the dressing room beyond." He tells me, "That's where it really kicked off. The room was yellow. There was a full length mirror on the wall."

He's staring at me avidly and all I can do is nod in confirmation.

"The door that your… that your brother was dragged through. It was the one closest to the dressing screen. By the wardrobe?"

I close my eyes and I'm back there, and I nod again to say he's right.

"There were stairs beyond there," he mutters, and I don't know if he's talking to me or thinking aloud. "Upstairs to Golding's study. There were stairs before he was taken, but the door slammed closed and I could never get through that way. And I kept ending up in the damn Ballroom." He breaks off with a sigh. "I thought the house was trying to keep me away from the study. It was in the tower room, and had a secret chamber, and we figured that was maybe where the séance had taken place. But I found another route. Through the kitchen and servants rooms." He suppresses a shiver. "But there was nothing there. Just a desk and books. Really heavy books" he rubs his shoulder absently. "And an ornate letter opener…" he trails off, staring into the distance, and I know he's no-longer in the room with me.

"I can hear him through the walls. There's pounding on the ceiling above, but there's nothing up there. Nothing on the plans."

"There was a lot that never made it onto the final plans," I tell him sorrowfully. "Like Golding's second study. It was removed from the later building plans, but I'm fairly certain it was built.

"It was the house itself that we were after," I explain, taking in his look of surprise. "We never thought it was a haunting. It was something manifesting in the bowels of the house itself. My brother's a geek. He wouldn't go in until we knew the whole layout. Said old buildings like that probably had hundreds of passageways and adjoining rooms and hidden compartments. We dug around until we got the original architects plans. From the planning office."

"They were lost in the fire." Crawley groans.

"What?"

"When we got here, the office had just re-opened. There'd been a fire. We were told the plans had been lost."

"You were told wrong," I tell him sadly.

"What were you planning to do?"

"Find the hidden room. Golding's second study where only his inner circle were likely to have trod. Whatever ritual they'd performed… Whatever set this thing in motion… it probably took place there. And it's not let anything rest since."

"What ritual did your brother have with him?"

"Hungarian cleansing ritual. Powerful mojo. You need to…" But Crawley's nodding and I know he knows the one I mean.

"Where's this hidden room. Did you think that was where your brother was taken?"

"Stop. Just stop with the questions!" I'm angry again now and I suddenly can't contain it. If I'd known where he was, does Crawley think I'd be sat here talking to _his_ sorry ass? This is _my_ investigation. _My_ hunt. Crawley forfeited the right the day he went stark raving bonkers and got himself admitted to a psych ward. What kind of hunter comes into a mental institution screaming about ghosts and houses and sweat dripping walls anyway?

He'd obviously not been a very good one.

I'm so furious that I barely register that I'm right in his face and I'm screaming until his fear and his pleas reach me. He's telling me to think of my brother. To let him help. I want to kill him for manipulating me in this way but the bastard knows what buttons to press. I need him, and he knows it now.

With a gasp I throw myself back to the other side of the room. I'm too close to lose my cool now. To risk exposure. To attract the building's security.

"The hidden room?" he prompts timidly, and I can't help but notice that somewhere along the way our roles have been reversed, and he's trying to tease information from me. Only he's terrified that I'll leave him alone to stew in his own impotence. To not give him the answers to explain his own spectacular failure. To let him rationalise his loss.

"It should have been behind the master bedroom." I offer with a sigh. I don't want to give him the satisfaction of answers, but my brother is worth more than my pride. "Only the entrance wasn't where the plans said it should be. Golding must have changed his mind again."

"The master bedroom," Crawley muses. "That's on the second floor too. Alongside the guest room. With means the study was probably alongside the dressing room. That stupid yellow dressing room."

There's an intensity about him that takes me aback, and I wish for a moment that I had seen him at his best, before the madness took hold. He can't stop shaking, but he would be lying if he told me he wasn't enjoying slotting the pieces of this age old puzzle together.

"I'd thought it was all about the Ballroom," he admits at last. "Because that's where I kept getting dragged down to. But it's not that at all. It wasn't about being in the Ballroom. It was about getting _away_ from the dressing room."

"Because the door to the hidden passage starts from there." I finish for him. It makes sense. It's going at the study from the other end, and it could be considered odd that Golding would have his private entrance to his private sanctuary in one of the more public rooms of the house. But it depends on who he had staying in that guest room. And Golding was a peculiar man. His building reflects that.

I'm starting to feel the distant tingling of excitement. I searched every room of that house in the morning light, after it had fallen dormant, and came away with nothing. If my brother is still in there – and he has to be, I refuse to believe otherwise – this hidden room is the only place I haven't checked.

"But the haggard old woman. She dragged my brother out of the door. Out of the room," I realise sadly. So much for that theory.

"That's what I thought too." Crawley's animation has not dimmed. "But did you actually see him go through the door? I saw them moving in that direction, but then the fat guy with the medals blindside me, and when I looked around again the door slammed shut. But the whole room was in chaos. I didn't actually see where they went."

He's right again. I hadn't seen it either. My mind had just supplied the doorway as the most logical place for them to have disappeared through. I'd been fighting a battle in my own mind, and by the time I'd got free, my brother and his opponent were long gone.

If they hadn't gone via the door there were a couple of other options. The fireplace? Through the mirror? – it wouldn't surprise me at this point. Behind the mirror? Behind some of the larger paintings? Behind the wardrobe? Through the wardrobe? Behind the dressing screen? There were rugs and tapestries and a million and one places someone with Golding's mind could have concealed an entrance.

Crawley's obviously thinking the same thing. He looks suddenly exhausted, and I wonder when the last time he forced himself to be this coherent for this long had been. He will crash soon, I can see it. I just hope I can get my answers before he does.

"What about the people in the room," I suggest. It sounds like we had a similar experience, but not exactly the same. How could it be? Half the house's fun was seeing what horrors and nightmares existed in my own mind, and turning them against me. But there had been differences from the outset. The fat General hadn't accosted me the first time I'd been in there. It had been the sequined showgirl, every bit as flexible as her act suggested she would be.

"It was a different crowd to the Ballroom. They weren't just indistinct shadows. They were more highbrow. More menacing. Maybe because they knew what was in there to protect? There was the General, the dancer – not exactly classy but I think she was well known in her day."

"Two men in suits," Crawley takes up, and I would be impressed with his memory if I didn't know he can see that room every time he closes his eyes. "An old man with a monocle and top hat. A lady in black with pearls." We both shudder.

"Oh. And Juliet," I finish. "Obviously."

Crawley starts.

"Juliet was there?" He exclaims in surprise. "Oh god… of course," He breathes.

"She wasn't in the room when you were there?" That doesn't make sense. "I though you'd seen her."

"Only at the roadside. I only heard her call for help. I never saw her again after that night in the cemetery. After we'd… taken her flowers." His lips curl sardonically.

"Why the hell not?" I don't understand this turn of events. "She was there last night."

"Did she attack you? Did she… like the others?" Crawley's hesitant again. Nervous, and I realise I've questioned his account again, and while he must know by now I believe him, the guy isn't exactly stable.

"No" I realise with a start. "She just watched. And smiled. God that smile. She was stood in front of the wardrobe the whole time, staring at me as the others set to work. And she was in the entrance again later. It was her that led me out."

"By the wardrobe?"

I nod and Crawley seems to melt into himself. All of the fight goes out of him in an instant. He's hiding from me again, and I can see the excitement has been too much. There is no strength to his limbs. He just slumps into his corner, eyes distant and staring, and the whispering has started up again. He's so tired he's not even shivering anymore, and as well as the dark shadows under his eyes, his lips have started to blue.

He's definitely ill. And I'm definitely out of time. I'm trying my hardest to rouse him again but my patience is wearing thin and I know that shouting and screaming at him like I want to is going to achieve very little in the long run, as satisfying as the short term effects might be.

I need to give him a short time to compose himself. To process for himself what he's just heard. I don't know when it last was that his mind was this stimulated, and it's obviously been wearing.

"Ok. It's ok James. We're going to take a short break here. Why don't I go and see about getting us some refreshments, and we'll pick up again in a little while?"

As I creep out of the room, I have no idea if he's even heard me.

-0-

When I make it back to his room later that evening, Crawley is gone.

It takes me a few minutes of standing in the quiet room to believe it. I even check under the bed. I'd been led to believe him as a long stay patient, he barely looked as though he had the energy to stand. But the kid is gone. The old moth-eaten blinds have been pulled aside, and the window is open.

I look out into the night. It's a considerable drop to the asphalt below, but I know it's one I could make if I needed to. But I'm at the peek of my fitness and training. The man that's been in this room with me all day should not have been able to do it, and I know in an instant that he's not as confused and medicated as he'd seemed.

He's played me.

I have no idea why, but he's played me.

Night has fallen and I should be making my way back to the house, but I'd known something was off and had wanted to see Crawley one last time. If I only had one shot at getting the house to give up my brother, I wanted all the information I could get.

But maybe that's not the only reason I'd come back here. Crawley had made me uneasy, and not just in a 'glimpse of what could be' or 'the madness that lies within' kind of a way. I'd opened up to him, despite my best intentions not to. After I'd left him to rest, I'd had time to think, and I couldn't escape the realisation that I had shared more with him than he had with me. I was desperate, and willing to take any avenue of help I could.

But one look at that empty room and I know that Crawley used me

The uneasy feeling I've been living with all day threatens to overwhelm me. I feel sick. I have no idea who Crawley was or what his motives had been, but it's clear I gave him what he wanted, and now he's cut and run.

I'd come here to save him, but I can't escape the feeling that I've endangered my brother. This isn't just the sick feeling of fear I've been living with all day, the nagging pain in my stomach that comes with knowing my brother isn't safe. This is something far more specific. Far more immediately wrong.

I need to find this guy, and I need to do it now. But I can't raise the alarm; admit there is a patient missing, because I shouldn't be in here either.

I head out of the building and round to the ally at the side, where Crawley dropped, but there is nothing I can see in the dark, no clue to where he might have gone.

But I know where he's gone. At least I should do. I can't explain it, but something tells me he isn't at the house. In fact, I can no longer feel it. The nightmare that had been living in me since I set foot on that property has gone. The night air feels still. There is no music rattling in my soul.

For the first time in decades, the Golding Mansion is dormant.

But the blinding sense of panic doesn't leave me.

There is something that I'm missing. Something important I need to do. If he's been back to the house Crawley knows where my brother is, and finding him is my biggest priority right now. Ever.

I cast my mind back over the day's events, everything that's happened since I set foot in that hospital room. It's all there somewhere. Something was said. Crawley got the information he wanted. He has to, otherwise he wouldn't have left.

Then it hits me, and I go cold.

Holly Memorial. Crawley had asked me about the cemetery. Where patients were buried now that the Golding cemetery was abandoned. I'd thought at the time his enquiry had made little sense, but now I know he's a hunter, it makes even less.

And I know where I will find him.

I don't remember the journey to the cemetery. I'm so desperate it's as though I will myself there. All my anger that had been bubbling under the surface at this kid all day is threatening to overwhelm me. I'm tearing through the cemetery, dodging and leaping over headstones, focusing on the flickering spot of light I can see in the distance.

They're knee deep in grave dirt when I find them, which surprises me enough to make me stop, drawing to a halt in front of them.

Crawley looks much healthier than he did the last time I saw him, face flushed now with exertion. He looks so much more alive, and the lines of loss and sorrow have been removed from his eyes.

I can't help but attribute much of this change to the man with him, leaning against the headstone and lighting the scene with his flashlight.

As soon as Crawley sees me he shifts to stand in front of the other man, broad shoulders fixed and protective, the shovel still gripped in his hands. He looks wary, as well the bastard might.

"Sam?"

His companion's voice is rough and hoarse. Taking a step to my right I peer around Crawley's figure and take my first look at the man he's with. The one I know this whole charade has been for.

His face is pale in the moonlight, mottled with the stark contrast of cuts and bruises. His eyes are red rimmed and haunted, and from the way he's leaning against the headstone at his side I know he does not have the strength to rise.

But the shotgun on his lap is lifted and held steady, and when I take a step towards them he raises it, and it doesn't waver.

"Dean," Crawley breathes softly, reassuringly, turning slightly to rest his hand on the other man's shoulder, but his eyes never leave my face.

"What are you doing?" I ask warily, still eyeing the gun in the second man's hands. He might have been instructed to stand down, but the look in his traumatised eyes tells me if I make a single move to threaten the man he's with, he will start firing without question.

I once had loyalty like that watching my back.

"James?"

"My name isn't James," he offers apologetically, "It's Sam."

He bends slowly and lowers the shovel into the open grave, laying it to rest with the soft thud of metal on wood. He keeps his eyes on me the whole time, standing up straight but raising one hand in front of him – not exactly in surrender, but to placate me somehow.

His friend's the one with the gun trained on me, so I can't help but think his deference to me is a little unnecessary. I'm not looking to get a hole in my chest, I just want answers.

"I'm sorry that I lied to you," Crawley, Sam, continues, and he does look sorry. But then, he'd looked traumatised and unhinged when I was talking to him this morning, so I can't help but think I shouldn't really be accepting a single word this kid says.

"But I needed your help. I needed to get my brother back." He glances at the badly beaten man on the ground behind him, and I know the fierce light of determination in his eyes as he takes in the other man is not a lie. "I needed to find him. I think maybe you can understand that need. But the house is at rest now. We put the house to rest. With your help."

"You're lying." But I know he's not. I've felt it since the moment it happened, somehow.

"I performed the cleansing ritual. The one you and your brother were going to try. I went back in at dusk and I found Golding's secret room. I found Dean." He swallows and closes his eyes. "And we banished it from that place. But there's still one more thing we need to do to put everything to rest. It's time to let go now. The house is at peace, along with all the souls it claimed. Along with Michael."

I gasp, and before I'm aware of it I'm taking a step forwards, until Dean clears his throat and, with his eyes, indicates to the shotgun still trained on me. But I almost can't bring myself to care. They know about Michael. They know about my brother, and I don't trust them enough to let them say his name.

"I know you tried to save him," Sam continues. "I know you did everything you could. I believe Michael knows that too."

"No. Don't. Stop saying that." I'm so angry that my vision is flickering in and out.

"Son of a bitch," Dean growls and his shotgun is raised, but Sam steps between us once again, his body language placating. He's calling my name, and it's grounding somehow, and I can see and feel again.

"Where did you…" I swallow and try again. "Where did you find him?" I indicate to Sam's brother, the one he found, and I know he succeeded where I failed. I know that he probably found Michael there too, and I wonder why they were too late to save him.

"There was a passageway behind the wardrobe. It was Juliet. Juliet was the key. She was the one that asked for help. She was the one who was trying to tell us how to end it all. Where to go. Only she didn't appear for us."

"Why not?" He could be talking a foreign language for the amount of sense he's making. Either that or the hum of rage in my ears is too loud for me to make his words out.

"We did it backward to you." Sam breathes softly. "We found Juliet first. We'd already visited her grave."

They'd salted and burnt her before going in the house. That was why she hadn't been there to show the way.

"But how? Because she was there last night. When Michael and I… she was there last night," I cry. I want to hurt them for lying to me now. Hurt them like their being reunited hurts me.

"You weren't in the house last night" Sam continues, and I know now he really is unhinged. "You haven't been there for a very long time."

Before I can protest any more his hand is back on his brother's shoulder, and he's shifting the other man slightly to the side. That's when I see the name in the headstone Dean is leaning against for the first time. The man who's grave they're digging.

"What the..!? I take a step backwards in shock. "This doesn't make sense. You're lying. You're both lying. Or you're crazy."

"One of us is crazy," Dean mutters, and Crawley elbows him, causing him to wince.

His discomfort calms me. I'm as calm as I can be staring at the headstone to my own desecrated grave.

"You were admitted to the hospital after Michael disappeared." Sam informs me. "You were found wandering along the roadside." With Julia. She'd got me out. So if what they're telling me is true I can't begin to imagine how this poor bastard managed it.

"You never left the hospital. Even after it closed, you never left it."

It was my grave he'd been asking about, when he'd wanted to know where inmates were interred.

I'd failed. I'd suffered and I'd died, and he'd come into _my_ domain, and tricked me into solving his problems.

"I'm sorry." He sounds frantic now, and the gun has been raised and is pointing once more at me. "But I needed your help. I knew you were the only one who could help me. So when I couldn't get Dean out myself, I went to the old hospital."

"Which we'll be having words about later," Dean growls. Sam just rolls his eyes in irritation, slight smile playing at his lips, and the interaction is so familiar that it's painful. That it takes my breath away.

Or it would. If I still had breath.

"You were mentioned in accounts of the house. You told the doctors that you'd been there. That the house had stolen your brother. It was from you that we first heard accounts of a hidden room. You thought that was where your brother had been taken. If there was any chance you could tell me what I needed to know, I had to take it. Please, you have to understand that."

I've been wandering those halls for years waiting for someone who could help me find out what became of my brother. So yeah. I can understand the desperation that drove him to me. I've been so angry, for longer than I can remember, and I can't even remember the reason why. I want to be angry at his words, to tear him apart, but the loss is too deep, too raw for that. I've been searching for Michael, but he's no-longer here to find.

I feel like I shouldn't believe him. I don't want to. But I only have to look at the two of them, see the bond they share, and I know he wouldn't lie about my loss. I know it's too immense for them to begin to contemplate. That's how I know they are going to finish this job, with or without my co-operation. How I know that Dean will fill me full of rock salt before I can even think about advancing.

Sam has the shovel back in his hands, and the sound of the sharp metal edge breaking through the coffin lid is deafening, and we both wince, and it isn't only at the abruptness of the sound.

They have salt and they have gasoline, and Sam is careful and methodical in the way he works. Reverent. I wonder if that's for my benefit, or if this is the way he approaches all his lost souls.

Sam lights the match and our eyes meet. I know he can sense the rage I feel towards him slowly building. He's felt it all along. It's why he's doing this, after all I've given him. He must feel like he has little choice. And suddenly I refuse to take it. I'm moving at them with increasing speed, but Dean doesn't even have to raise the gun to protect them now.

"Go find your brother," Dean whispers.

Sam drops the match.


End file.
